Apinis, Anna

displaced persons

HT 21863

Digitised

1930 to 1949

154 mm (Width), 12 mm (Depth), 210 mm (Height) Handwritten, front cover, black and red pen, and pencil: “2. Latvica (?) / roller shuttle / warping mill ..” further handwritten inscriptions on cover.

96 page notebook with grey cardboard cover, white taped spine and red and white string assisting in binding the book together along with staples. Front cover features writing in Latvian. Graph lined pages filled with weaving designs both drawn directly onto the pages and cut out and adhered to the pages. Annotations in Latvian.

Notebook documenting traditional Latvian weaving designs. It was kept by Anna Apinis, who attended weaving lessons in Liepaja in Latvia from 1930 to 1933. She spent hours at the nearby Ethnographic Museum recording traditional fabric designs in her notebooks. Anna continued compiling these notebooks throughout her years in Memmingen Displaced Persons camp in Germany from 1947, until she immigrated to Australia with her husband Ervins and son Erik in 1950. She painstakingly sketched and documented ancient Latvian designs from the regional costumes rescued by other Latvian refugee women in this notebook. She then wove them on her loom with threads gathered by unravelling old scraps of fabric.

Notebook